Deconstructing Eurocentric Representation in Charles Johnson's "Middle Passage"

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2015 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 16/20, , course: Afro-American literature, language: English, abstract: In many ways, Charles Johnson¿s novel "The Middle Passage" (1990) can be considered a subtle rewriting of slavery and a meticulous rethinking of the Eurocentric representations of blacks. Through the journey of an ex-slave, Calhoun Ruthford, stowing away on a ship to escape a forced marriage, Charles Johnson weaves a postmodern slave narrative told from the perspective of a black protagonist to question the tropes of white superiority.

In every twist and turn of the plot, Calhoun¿s reflective Journey underlies different sites of deconstruction against white paradigms, artistically masterminded to unveil significant moments of self-contradictory essentialist Eurocentrism. With a counter-discourse advocating inter-subjectivity, human interconnectedness, subjective mobility and third spaces, the middle passage, as this essay argues, enacts different deconstructive strategies involving anti-Eurocentric cultural politics with rebellious Afro-American poetics